Wisconsin native, conservative critic of everything.
"Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God." ---G K Chesterton
"The only objective of Liberty is Life" --G K Chesterton
"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions" --G K Chesterton
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling

Thursday, February 03, 2011

BATF: Incompetent and Worse

We mentioned BATF's inane proposal to mandate "recording" of all sales of more than one semi-auto >.22 cal. rifle. As of now, that recording will be limited to a few border States.

In a sign of the cost of widespread U.S. weapons smuggling into Mexico, federal law enforcement sources have confirmed that two guns, part of a series of purchases that were being monitored by authorities, were found at the scene of the firefight that killed a U.S. Border Patrol agent in southern Arizona.

BATF has been 'monitoring' sales of long-arms near the border to 'better understand' smuggling routes and methods.

Except when they are NOT 'monitoring' and 'understanding.' Then people get killed.

...federal agents were not always able to ascertain what happened to weapons after being purchased by straw buyers — legal residents who buy the weapons from licensed gun dealers, but end up selling the guns to Mexican drug cartels.

Oops! Dead Border Patrolman.

(If you read the statements from BATF, you'll find exceptionally good spin, by the way....)

It gets even worse.

Dick DeGuerin, who represents Houston gun dealer Bill Carter, owner of Carter Country, said the company is now being threatened with a federal indictment as a result of multiple sales to purported straw purchasers — sales he said were not only reported to the ATF, but which federal agents encouraged Carter Country employees to complete.

"What's going on now is some of these agents are scared of their own careers, and are afraid to own up to the fact that they encouraged Carter Country to go through with these sales," DeGuerin said. "The breakdown came with, what did the ATF do with the information that Carter Country was delivering to them? Apparently, they didn't do much."